


breathing like i never did

by pyrites



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Bisexual Character, Butch Georgie, Character Study, Coming Out, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Humor, For both Georgie and Jon!, GNC Georgie Barker, Gen, Gender Exploration, Jewish Georgie Barker, Jewish Jonathan Sims, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary Jonathan Sims, THEY ARE BOTH DOING THEIR BEST!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-22
Updated: 2020-02-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:22:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22839256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrites/pseuds/pyrites
Summary: Georgie thought she knew what yearning was. It turns out all she knew were loose synonyms, the basic dictionary definition. Love has never been a foreign language. It’s not as if she’s been without. She’s been sure of what all of these things are, but now it’s like—It’s like a hammer has been brought down on her heart and cracked it wide open.Or, Georgie Barker discovers the butch identity, and where she fits into it.
Relationships: Georgie Barker & Jonathan Sims, Georgie Barker/Jonathan Sims, Georgie Barker/Melanie King
Comments: 141
Kudos: 443
Collections: GerryTitan verse





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i had written a [meta post about butch georgie](https://gerrydelano.tumblr.com/post/190540164675/) on tumblr, and the positive response was really overwhelming! so i decided to expand on the [companion drabble](https://gerrydelano.tumblr.com/post/190591867920/) i'd written there and turn it into something proper. i've made myself and others seriously emotional while writing this, hoo.
> 
> suggested listening: [breathing by hamzaa](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpOyl4eNqJI)

The clothes in her closet disgust her a little. They’re in perfectly good condition, they’ve received plenty of offhanded compliments. There’s nothing about them that should be _disgusting_ to her. Georgie doesn’t quite know what it is that’s so wrong about them, but there are only a few things she can stand to wear nowadays and it leaves her doing laundry far more often than if she actually utilized the full scope of everything she owned.

She doesn’t want to wear a silk blouse to her next interview. She doesn’t think a pencil skirt will get her hired and if that’s really the deciding factor, well, maybe she doesn’t want the job. She hasn’t touched a pair of high heels since her graduation from secondary school. The same pair is sitting in a box on the floor of the closet with everything else she keeps shutting the door on. She could never quite make herself a metronome, a model, a piece of moving music. Her walk had never been song and dance. Just pinched and slipped a bit on a freshly waxed floor and led her to nearly busting her teeth climbing up onto the stage.

It hadn’t felt worth it, standing on that stage with her ankles out like that under the graduation gown. Felt unstable, she remembers. Like everyone was just looking at her ankles and not her achievement. Waiting for them to give out or something. For her to go full Bambi on ice and fall apart right there because these weren’t actually her legs. She hadn’t given them the satisfaction — _them_ being the stupid little monsters in her brain telling her that she was being judged, not the audience who she knows only wanted to get out of there as much as she did. She’d made it off the other end of the stage and back to her chair, and waited for the moment she was allowed to walk barefoot off the premises and to her family, her friends in the grass out front. Better to be made fun of for being shorter than all of them than to be at eye level and just feel unreal.

But if not this, then what? It’s not like the point of a job interview is to look comfortable anyway. It’s to make yourself look professional, marketable. You’re not even supposed to be memorable, nothing bright or flashy or unique. It’s all very dismal, really. Georgie runs her fingers along her only purple blouse and wonders just how much of the world will only take her seriously if she sacrifices something for it. She ponders a way out, and comes up short.

The closet shuts with a muffled sound, so stuffed full of unusable, unwanted things. It takes Georgie’s full weight against the door to coax the knob into clicking with the promise of staying put.

* * *

It isn’t quite so unusable anymore when Jon comes into the picture. Rather, when Georgie realizes that Jon likes playing with the sleeve of the scarlet cardigan that she only wears when there’s a line in the laundry room and she’s out of hoodies. It’s a bit frumpy for her, bit mature. It’s something she could better see her gran wearing at Rosh Hashanah dinner. Come to think of it, it probably was her gran’s first. She doesn’t remember when it became hers, or really why.

There are little gold beads along the hem where the buttons lie. She watches Jon’s fingertips fiddle with them over her stomach while they stack together on the couch. He doesn’t say anything about it, but she commits it to memory.

This isn’t the first time. She’s caught him looking strangely wistful before as she does her ironing, rubbing his thumbs along the collar of a cotton jumper that he’s been instructed to put on a hanger for her. She doesn’t mind most of her jumpers, but some of them are a bit tight in the bust. The emphasis it puts there bothers her enough to leave them on the hangers most days.

The one Jon is holding when she finally speaks up was one she’d worn to the cinema with him a few days prior, creme colored and knit with knotted patterns up and down the front. He doesn’t even seem to be thinking of anything in particular. Just touching. Keeping to himself.

“Do you want that?”

Jon jolts where he sits like she’s just thrown ice water into his lap. “What?”

Georgie nods to the jumper. It’s still clutched in his hands, now pulled protectively to his chest. “You should try it on, if you like it. I won’t miss it much.”

The way Jon’s brow knits almost makes her think she might have made a mistake. Not in her observations — no, those have been thoroughly confirmed — but in her choosing to voice them. His arms jerk a bit as he seems to remember all at once what he’s holding, and he casts the jumper away from him like it had been lit on fire. Georgie cocks a brow.

“Well, there’s no need to be so dramatic.”

“I hardly know what you mean,” Jon says quickly. “I-I couldn’t possibly—”

“You really could.” Georgie shrugs. “It’s just a jumper.”

Jon keeps his face turned away, as if he really stands any chance. “...But, um. Don’t you think it’s a bit, um. F—”

“Feminine? Yeah.” She laughs, halfway mirthless. “Part of why I think you should try it on.”

Now the way Jon looks at her is almost as if he’s trying to force himself to look offended. Appalled. Aghast. Hurt. Something that definitely isn’t there, rather drowned out by something that Georgie thinks looks a lot more like hope. Better stoke that, then. She leans both of her hands on the ironing board and gives a shrug just shy of theatrical, gazing off towards a potted plant until it feels safe to look him in the eyes again.

“It’d look better on you than me, that’s for sure.”

Jon leaves that evening with two jumpers, the beaded scarlet cardigan _(“Wasn’t this your grandmother’s?” “It’s fine, she’s not dead or anything.” “Ah.”)_ and having learned just as much about Georgie as she has about him. Which is to say, just enough.

* * *

Georgie first sees Leo Sutcliffe in an elective course on satirical writing. She sits just one row ahead and she shrugs off a leather jacket onto the back of her chair to reveal the strongest looking shoulders that Georgie has ever seen through the back of a woman’s t-shirt. Must spend a lot of time at the gym. She leans heavily into the bend where her desk is welded to the chair, sleeve of dark tattoos wrapped tightly all the way to the wrist. Even from back here, Georgie can see that she keeps her knees far apart. One of them bounces as she drums her fingers against the fabric of her loose jeans, in time with some song that no one else in the room seems to comprehend.

Georgie catches her own knee bouncing to the same rhythm before class lets out. She watches Leo get up from her desk in one smooth motion, swinging her jacket back on and hefting her bag onto one shoulder without ever once halting her stride to readjust.

She smiles at Georgie as she passes. A quick, uneven flash of teeth that makes Georgie’s heart open up like a trapdoor in her chest. Something comes pouring out of it and settles in her stomach like candle wax.

There was a musicality in Leo’s heavy footsteps. It sings in Georgie’s ears as she walks herself home.

Before the start of the next class she taps one of those strong shoulders with a pen, bold as brass. Leo’s face does something extraordinary when she says that her name is _Georgie,_ a streak of dayfire dancing loudly in her eyes. Georgie wishes she knew herself well enough to confidently call it recognition. For now, she settles for calling it handsome.

“I love it,” Leo says, and lowers her voice as she leans over the back of her seat. “Y’know, Leo’s short for Eleanor. But you understand.”

Georgie understands. There is something here that she wants, desperately, to understand more.

There is no fear left in her to stop her asking questions. Nothing to stop her from asking if they could start doing their homework for this class together. Nothing to stop her from admiring the way Leo moves and the way she sits and the way she cuts her hair and the way she presses her knuckles together when she’s telling a story that makes her smile with all the fierce warmth of the sun in July. The way she takes up space and doesn’t apologize for it. The way her laughter fills a room. The way she pats Georgie’s cheek firm enough for it to feel almost like a slap, and for _that_ feel like the kindest touch imaginable. Something solid. Something real, like if it _were_ intended as a slap, Georgie would be able to take it. Deliver one back. Carry on a volley of gentle ungentle. Pass it on.

There is no fear left in her to stop Georgie from wanting to make other people feel the way Leo makes her feel. That deep comfort in her heart, that giddy jump and stutter of _can we be the same? Do you really see yourself in me?_

When Leo slings her arm around her shoulders and gives her a good shake as they walk to their cars after a late dinner, Georgie doesn’t buckle under her weight. She shakes her right back, their fists knotted in the backs of each other’s jackets until they let go at the same time, together.

* * *

For a fully grown adult, Jon is pretty scrawny. Georgie can wrap her whole hand around his wrist, it feels like, and she swears he eats. She eats with him when she’s not eating with Leo, so she’s more or less convinced he’s just got a metabolism from some sort of mirror dimension.

This means that it’s hard for her to borrow his clothes. When he borrows hers he’s all but swimming in them, but they work out ways to tie decorative knots at the hem of certain shirts. The waist of the one long skirt that Georgie had bought under the assumption that she might like wearing skirts better if they reached all the way to her ankles. She’d been wrong, of course, but if any good came of it, it was learning that Jon prefers skirts like that for the exact same reason.

He doesn’t wear it to classes or anything. Just when they’re lounging about in privacy, where no one other than Georgie can see. She watches the way he tucks his legs up onto the couch and drapes the flowing fabric around him like he’s posing for a Renaissance painter, entirely unable to keep a straight face. The first time he’d caught her smiling, he’d drawn his knees up defensively and hunched forward at the shoulders, angling his book up to hide behind it. By now he just smiles back, and returns to his reading.

The most that Georgie can steal from Jon on a regular basis is his one oversized jacket, a few various accessories. She’s been wearing his watch for the better part of the last month, given flippantly. It just makes his wrist look that much skinnier, but it sits nicely around hers. His button-ups don’t close around her chest, but there are a few that never fit him quite right to begin with that she can wear over a graphic tee for some extra decoration. Georgie is long past thinking that she likes them because they belong to Jon; she knows by now that there’s another reason behind it.

Jon’s figured it out, too. She looks up from her homework to watch him bustle around the kitchen one day and catches the way his shirt stops too low over his thighs. At first she thinks it’s a dress considering the leggings underneath, but no. Just an inappropriately sized button-up. She can’t help snorting at the complete loss of his entire ass to the fall of loose fabric. He does that little twitchy sniff he always does when he’s trying to tell you that he’s going out of his way to ignore you, which kind of defeats the purpose but gets a message across nonetheless.

She lets it go until he wears it in front of her again, tucked in this time and looking for all the world like some costume from his latest period drama production. The sleeves rolled up to his elbows still fall a bit down his arms.

“I know what you’re up to,” she pipes up. “Subtlety eludes you _badly,_ Sims.”

Jon barks a sharp laugh. “Oh, I’m _Sims_ now? What am I, your rugby mate?”

“You wouldn’t survive rugby. Surprisingly elephant-relevant.”

“...Elephant-r—?”

“ _The elephant in the room,_ Jon. Fess up.”

Jon looks down at himself in such deeply sarcastic scrutiny that she almost wants to pop him in the shoulder for it. “Suppose you mean the shirt, then.”

“That circus tent you’ve been parading around in?” She laughs. “Yeah.”

Jon hisses, pulling it outward by the hem to sulk down at it. “That hurts. I liked the color.”

It’s forest green. Georgie’s favorite. She could just _kiss_ him for this, but that would require breaking character. Instead she raises a hand to snap her fingers at him, _chop chop,_ eyes rolling.

“Give it here, then.”

She about rolls off the couch with laughter when Jon pulls it over his head only to reveal that he’s been wearing a proper shirt of his own underneath it. Not even a plain undershirt, but a nice one with horizontal stripes he’d taken off her hands three weeks ago. There are tears in the corners of her eyes when he gives her shoulder a shove to sit her back up. He’s trying to look stern, but his stubborn mouth is wobbling in protest of a smile.

Georgie takes the shirt from him. Instead of pulling off her hoodie to try it on, she pulls him onto her lap by the waist. He relents and perches on her knees, his arms a loose cage around her head as she rests forward against his chest.

“Thank you.” She sighs, and then pinches him. “But the _drama.”_

He drops a kiss on the crown of her head, undeterred. “Whatever works, Georgie. Whatever works.”

* * *

Leo gifts her with her copy of _Stone Butch Blues_ and tells her to be careful. It’s heavy, but it’s worth it. Georgie skips through the whole book to read the parts sectioned off in pink highlighter first before she starts over again to focus. She wants to burn through it in one sitting, but she has to step away and cry often enough that it takes her almost a full week. She reads it alone. Reads it twice.

Edwin’s suicide bites down on her throat and hangs on for days. Jess’ lifelong despair scratches tallies into the curved bones guarding her heart. The old ghost of Butch Al reduces her to sobbing. Ruth’s love makes her wonder, and want for something she can’t articulate.

It’s heavy, but it’s worth it.

Georgie thought she knew what yearning was. It turns out that all she knew were loose synonyms, the basic dictionary definition. She’s always known what it was like to want things. Companionship, support. Love has never been a foreign language. It’s not as if she’s been without. She’s known what all of these things are, but now it’s like—

It’s like a hammer has been brought down on her heart and cracked it wide open. It’s like holding the pieces in her own hands and realizing in awe that she’d been pumping blood through a geode her entire life. That something so beautiful could really be living inside of her. That she can’t put it back together again now that she’s seen it for what it really is. That she doesn’t want to. Not for anything.

It’s the whole sky breaking apart and letting down a mess of _hope_ like rain, rain, rain. It’s someone she’ll never meet asking her to come home. It’s wanting to be there already, but still not quite knowing where it is.

It’s wondering then if she’s just a chameleon. If she’s emulating something she can never _really_ be, changing colors to suit a crowd that she’d never quite fit into. She thinks about a world where someone tries to tell her _no_ and a miserable pressure builds in her throat. Raw desperation. Inexplicable sorrow. A deep desire for approval. A private vow to spend every moment earning it, somehow. Someway. Someday.

Georgie thinks about what yearning means now when it starts storming outside her window, when thunder rolls through the room and Jon is pressed quietly up against her back. She would turn around and kiss his shoulder if she wasn’t sure that he’d just wake up. He sleeps so lightly, like his very subconscious is too nervous to turn the lights all the way off in his head. She’s seen the worrylines on his forehead as he dreams. It had always done something to her heart that she’d never been able to explain to herself. Something sprawled and tangled between love and sadness, worry and determination, fire and balm.

It makes more sense now. There’s a word for it.

* * *

Alma Xia is almost too beautiful. The sort of beauty you think most people don’t have the energy to chase and maintain. She curls her hair and pins it up like she’s shooting a movie overseas, not walking to the dining hall for a crappy lunch. Georgie’s never seen her with a chipped nail. Not an eyelash out of place. It’s like she jumped out of some classic photograph to start existing in the modern world on an adventurous whim, except Georgie knows she puts in a ton of effort to look how she does. She has her way of feeling good about herself. She emulates people, too.

Alma walks with her forefinger hooked on Leo’s belt loop, just under the hem of her jacket at the small of her back. They’ve been together almost three years, and they talk about marriage like they’ve already signed the papers. Georgie watches them with admiration that she thinks might be kind of silly; the “butch mentor myth” is exactly that, and there’s no need to venerate bar culture and try to relive it. This isn’t the old days. They’re not even in America.

But that’s not what Leo and Alma are doing by loving each other. They’ve just found home in words that wrap them up neatly, and they find ways to show it that tell other people loud and clear what their spirits are made of. Georgie respects it too much to judge herself for watching them so closely.

“I just don’t know if I can pull it off.” Georgie wiggles her foot where she’s braced it on the bench across from her, careful not to kick Leo’s bag. “Body type and all that.”

“Who cares?” Leo’s arms are stretched out along the back of her bench. “Come on, I can bring you to where I got my first one. They’ll fit it for you.”

“I think you mean _I’ll_ be bringing you _both_ there.” Alma drums her nails on the table, quick and impatient. “I have an eye for great ties. I’ll fix you right up, Georgie, and that interview is going to turn into them _begging_ you to work for them.”

Georgie laughs. “What, because I look so hot in a suit?”

Alma’s eyes narrow, earnest. “Because you know who you are.”

Leo scoffs. “And you’ll look hot in the suit.”

* * *

Jon gives her one of his spare kippot to pin over her braids before they go to temple for Yom Kippur. It’s been a long time since either of them observed a holiday with any sense of strictness, but it feels right this year. It’s as good a time as any to enter a synagogue as someone new, he tells her. A clean slate. When she realizes that no one is looking at her sideways, she decides she’ll have to buy one for herself. She should start coming to temple more often. It feels different now.

Atonement is intended to be spoken. She and Jon don’t share everything they’re to atone for, but they agree on one thing together. To consider acts of wrong against themselves. They owe themselves apologies for the things they had spent so long denying. It’s all about spiritual wellness, really. Jon suggests that they deserve forgiveness for it.

So Georgie makes him drink water when he sways three quarters of the way through the fast. Reminds him that spiritual wellbeing shouldn’t come at the price of his body. That divine punishment won’t rain from the sky and tell him to suffer for it.

They’ve been fasting for so long already. It’s time to break it.

* * *

Georgie keeps her back to the mirror in the dressing room. Alma’s suggested pieces hang on hooks in front of her, sans the tie. That was to be a surprise, apparently. The pins and needles don’t come off with the rest of her clothes, rather dig harder into her skin as she exchanges them slowly for something she wishes she’d had the courage to wear to her secondary school graduation.

As she steps into a pair of stiff navy trousers, Georgie thinks now’s as good a time as any to do some self-reflecting. Not like she hasn’t been doing various forms of reflecting since she met Leo, but this is probably a pivotal moment. Something like that.

How long has she been this way? How long was it obvious to everyone but her?

She remembers playing house with her childhood best friend when she was seven and insisting on playing the dad. She remembers the first girl she’d fallen in love with when she was thirteen, holding her when she curled up in sorrow over the sad movie they put on during a sleepover. Holding her again when she cried over the boy who rejected her valentine, and offering to beat him up. She remembers every smug little teenage boy who ever looked at her like she wasn’t a conquest but rather the competition, and realizes now that she’d taken pride in that even back before she knew why it would be so funny in ten years’ time.

Georgie connects the dots between her instincts and what they mean, between the way she walks and where she’s going. The music in heavy soles and a ring of keys bouncing off her thigh, the metronome she’d been missing. She examines her love for other people and it has an entire universe that knows what to call it. She thinks about Jon, who doesn’t entirely know who he is yet and that’s okay. It doesn’t matter. He’s a _person_ that she can be _safe_ for, and that’s all it takes. She thinks about her feelings for him and they don’t dismantle or disprove anything that she’s learning about herself.

She doesn’t turn to face the mirror before stepping back out. Alma whirls around (had she been pacing?) and gasps into her hands before melting into such visible adoration that Georgie goes a bit lightheaded. Leo’s July smile is bright over Alma’s shoulder.

The tie Alma chose is gorgeous. A deep blue with white buds and golden leaves all twisted around each other, climbing and reaching and blooming and brave. Alma lifts Georgie’s collar and loops the tie around her neck herself, expert hands soft as she buttons the jacket and smooths it down over Georgie’s chest. A quick brush of her rounded nails over the shorn hair around the shell of Georgie’s ear. She’d taken out her braids just yesterday.

Georgie allows herself to be turned around to face the series of mirrors at the end of the hall of fitting rooms. She doesn’t know what she had been expecting, but it wasn’t for the wind to be knocked straight out of her. Alma leaves her hands on her back, drops her chin over her shoulder to meet eyes with her reflection.

“There you are. How’s it feel?”

Georgie doesn’t have much of an answer. She opens her mouth to speak and a strangled laugh comes out instead. It takes another try to get out the truth.

“Feels right. I, um… Thank you, guys. For helping me out.”

“Feel confident in the word yet?” Leo jams her hands into her pockets, head tipped. “In this moment right here, do you feel any more like you deserve it? Don’t think. Just say.”

Georgie forces herself not to think. Out comes her _yes_ like she could have been saying it all along. Like she should have, and she’s been foolish for dancing around it. Holding herself back from something she’s always had a right to. And now that she’s said yes, maybe she can say the word. She makes eye contact with Leo in the mirror, raises a brow. It feels like she may never stop smiling.

“It’d be pretty hard _not_ to flag me as butch in this getup, wouldn’t it?”

Leo beams. Alma steps around to reach for the knot of Georgie’s tie and give it a tug. From there she pulls Georgie into her arms, presses a ruby kiss to her cheek that all but fizzes even after she pulls away to say a string of words that Georgie thinks describes the way this feels better than anything she could have thought up herself.

“Welcome to the love letter, baby.”

* * *

When she and Jon part ways, it isn’t because she’s started to change too much. It just gives her some more opportunities to get to know herself all over again.

Georgie starts over.

* * *

And when he shows up on her doorstep after so long, after they’ve both changed so much, Jon registers the difference. Georgie fixes him a cup of tea and she brings it over to the couch, sits down on the coffee table and rests her elbows on her knees, hands laced in front of her, the slope of her shoulders strong and rounded as she leans forward to inspect him. There’s a sad caution in her eyes, but the curve of her jaw is dauntless around “ _yes, of course you can stay_ ” when he asks her for her help.

Jon relaxes into the couch and Georgie straightens up, slaps her hands on her knees, and sighs. He watches her get up and move around the room, pointing out where things are and continuously chattering to fill the silence. The clink of her keys hanging on her belt loop is a gentle tempo to her words. Her walk is song and dance.

He keeps looking at her braids. They’re longer than they were when she wore her hair like that in college, half of them tied up in a complicated knot at the back of her head. The ones left loose fall forward over her shoulder when she bends over to give the Admiral a scratch as it passes on its way to inspect the couch.

Georgie remembers what it takes to put him at ease — she has an elephant’s memory for the things that people need — and she’s bringing a stack of spare blankets to the couch by the time he finishes his tea and feels fit to change the subject.

“You look good, Georgie.” It’s so abrupt that he looks bashful about it. When her brows flick up, he laughs and stares back down into his mug. “I-I just mean... you look like _yourself_.”

Georgie straightens up, props her hands on her hips, her head cocked to the side, and smiles. “I feel good, yeah. Correct, you know?”

“Correct, yes, that’s— that’s the word. Confident, too? N-Not that you weren’t before, but— it’s brighter now, I can see it. You look… You look happy.”

For just a second, figuring out the reason that Jon is here doesn’t matter so much. Of course it still matters — the worrylines on his forehead are there while he’s awake now. The bags under his eyes are more like suitcases, stuffed full with everything he has left to his name. It isn’t much, apparently, but it looks heavy. He looks heavy, and Georgie knows she’s got muscle to spare. He must still know that, if he’s here of all places.

She’s still someone he feels safe with. Safest with, even, considering how afraid he looks even when he’s trying to be polite, friendly. Something about knowing that sends a burst of pride lancing through her heart, but it’s tinged with something else. Some amount of sorrow, maybe. For having missed whatever caused this. For not being able to stop it before it happened. Something that she knows she doesn’t owe him, but still wishes she had the power to give.

She’s learned a strong response to the pangs of yearning she still gets. To calm herself as much as whoever needs her, to make the very air around them safe. Georgie hopes there’s just enough dayfire in her eyes that he can still see it when she smiles at him with all the fierce warmth of the sun in July.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and here's some art, too:  
> \+ [art of georgie in her suit](https://gerrydelano.tumblr.com/post/611251440001892352/) by @cryptic-corvids!  
> \+ [another suit georgie](https://gerrydelano.tumblr.com/post/611688031053873152/) by @mediocreskills!  
> \+ [one more](https://gerrydelano.tumblr.com/post/625389743750938624/) by @kimrylthelordofbones!  
> \+ [some what the girlfriends](https://gerrydelano.tumblr.com/post/623831171145564160/) by @cheshirecatboyfriend, loosely based on my georgie HC!
> 
> i hope this sheds some light on a few of the emotional intricacies of the butch identity for some people who might not have known much about it, and i hope that to any other butches who read this that i captured something you may have felt at some point in your own journey into the love letter :')
> 
> let me know what you thought of this! this topic makes me feel so many things, man. g-d. only comment i ask you don't give are gatekeepy ones. just read the meta for my stance. this is a no biphobia zone.
> 
> next bit is what the girlfriends!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _When Georgie walks into the living room to see Melanie on the couch in a forest green button-up, she does a double take before she doubles over with laughter._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> blame this bit on [this post](https://gerrydelano.tumblr.com/post/190544414250/)! i had a lot of fun expanding on this. enjoy some soft what the girlfriends!

When Georgie walks into the living room to see Melanie on the couch in a forest green button-up, she does a double take before she doubles over with laughter. Melanie jolts and curls into herself in shock before swinging her legs off the couch in demand, her bare feet pressing hard into the carpet. G-d, and she’s not even wearing anything underneath. It could be sexy in that charming, domestic way if it wasn’t so _funny._

“What!” Melanie slaps her hands down on the cushions beside her, enormously unthreatening in all its softness. “You tell me why you’re laughing at me, Georgie, I swear—”

“I’m not laughing at you,” Georgie tries. “Okay. No, I’m laughing at you, b-but it’s because—”

“Yeah, keep at it.” Melanie feels around on the couch for her phone, thumbing the home button. “I’ll just ask Google if you can sprain a lung.”

Georgie needs to shamble to the fridge for a sip of whatever’s on the nearest door bin before she can explain that Melanie is wearing Jon’s shirt without bursting into hysterics. She only laughs harder at the look that crosses Melanie’s face. It’s like she’s been slapped with a live fish. She looks moments away from ripping the damn thing off before she seems to remember that it’s the only thing she’s got on. Her face goes pink, a squiggly sort of frown twisting her pretty mouth.

“I… just grabbed the softest thing out of your closet.” She sounds bashful now, embarrassed. “Not really like I can tell what from what.”

Georgie softens. “I know, love. I’m sorry. You’re welcome to everything I’ve got in there. I just wasn’t expecting you to land on _that_ one.”

“Why do you still have something of his?” Melanie crosses her arms. “Isn’t that sort of weird?”

“In this case, I think I’m entitled.” Georgie brings the bottle of orange juice that had just saved her life over to the couch. “It wasn’t his for all that long. Was technically always meant for me.”

“So you just told me it was his to get a _reaction_ out of me?”

“And you really gave it hell, too.”

Melanie swings out a hand to swat her arm. Georgie touches the corner of the bottle to her knee to let her know she’d brought over a drink, and she feels around with her fingertips for the neck of it to take it for herself. Georgie reaches out to fiddle with the hem of the shirt where it lays over Melanie’s thigh. Melanie squints like she’s contemplating swatting at that, too. She touches around to find the back of it instead.

“If there’s a story, you’re free to tell it.”

Georgie scoffs. “You want to hear me get all soft and fond over my ex-boyfriend Jonathan Sims, who you can’t stand?”

“Not really. But if it made you laugh that hard, it’s got to be something good.”

“It was something good. He pretended he’d bought it for himself back when I was experimenting with masculine clothes, but he’d gotten it in my size. Just wore it around waiting for me to notice it.”

“Oh, my G-d.”

“I know.”

“Bet he looked like a stick figure with hair.”

Georgie laughs. She takes the orange juice bottle when Melanie empties it and sets it on the coffee table in front of her. When she leans back, Melanie tips over to tuck herself into the circle of her open arms.

“He helped me back then,” Georgie says. “He has this roundabout way of supporting people. Like he expects you to figure it out yourself that that’s what he’s up to. Not everybody’s got the energy to play along with all that, but it could be sort of special sometimes.”

Melanie scoffs. “Yeah. Roundabout sounds right.”

Georgie gives her a squeeze. Won’t delve into it unless Melanie does first. Better to wrap this up quick. It’s awful, actually. It’s usually _Georgie_ who goes out of her way to avoid the topic of Jon being brought up after what happened. Melanie’s softer about it than Georgie finds herself able to be most of the time. Honestly, she’s shocked at her own lack of forethought. She’s usually so careful about entering rooms with sudden noise, too.

There are just some memories that can’t be ripped up with an awl, it seems. Good things that leave marks, too. Jon had left good marks on her. She still hopes she’d left enough on him to get him through what he’s putting himself through right now. Whatever of it that he can be protected from by something so fragile as sentiment.

Georgie presses her cheek to the top of Melanie’s head. Her conditioner smells like cherry blossom and almond. Earthy. Sweet.

It’s been a while since she thought hard on what yearning really means. Melanie curls up, sightless, in her arms and Georgie swallows a sprawling tangle of love and sadness. Remembers the worrylines on Jon’s forehead when he slept back in college, on her couch, sitting up on the floor and slumped over the coffee table. Georgie has brushed Melanie’s hair from her face and seen the very same when she slept, too, both her arms wrapped around one of Georgie’s like her weight in the bed beside her was a life preserver in a cold ocean. 

Georgie’s felt protective yearning before. It always feels different with different people, but it always comes from the same place. There’s still a geode in her chest, cracked open and rattling and in love with so very many things. She’s spent years shining it since it first came apart. Keeping it bright. She still sees Leo and Alma, married now and raising a little boy. She still has the suit that convinced her that beautiful words can belong to her honestly, fully, finally.

“You never got around to reading _Stone Butch Blues,_ did you?”

“Mm?” Melanie tips her head up. Her fingers are hooked on Georgie’s collar, tugging the neckline a bit. “No, not properly. Never found the time.” She sighs. “I’m a bad femme.”

Georgie tuts. “You _are_ not. Just a busy one whose been through a lot.”

Melanie hums again. “Why ask?”

“Just thinking about Jon and the shirt,” Georgie admits. “That’s when Leo gave it to me, I got a bit obsessed with it. I’ve calmed down some since uni, but it still sticks with me. I still think about things through some lens relating back to it, you know? To make sense of things.”

“There an audiobook?”

“I’d love to read it to you myself.” Georgie presses her lips to Melanie’s forehead. No worrylines. “I want you to understand what I mean when I say I think you might be my Ruth.”

Georgie’s gone on about the book before, of course, but it feels like a thousand years have passed since. It’s not like Melanie’s never heard of it. She always listened, cheek in hand, absorbing what it meant to her, but Georgie wouldn’t blame her for not retaining every little detail. Priorities. Pains.

Melanie fits her head against Georgie’s neck. “Remind me again what it’s all about.”

Georgie lets out a deep breath. Ponders the poetry of it before she answers.

“When I love somebody, it tends to stick. Doesn’t just turn off when they turn out on me, I tend to keep it. Not in any way you should feel threatened by, mind you. I mean like how I still love my friend Leo, even if really I only see her and Alma when they need a babysitter. It’s a big theme in the book. Main character’s touched by a lot of people. Loves them all different. I really feel that.”

A gushing sigh. Not so troubled as it is theatric. Safe. “This your way of telling me you still love your ex?”

“I’m always gonna love how he changed me. And I love _you_ enough to tell him to get the hell out. Take that as you will.”

She hears Melanie’s quiet snicker up against the side of her neck. It’s a little muted, not quite with guilt, but something. There’s always going to be something, and Georgie is ready.

“So, which one’s Ruth again?”

Georgie pulls back. When Melanie lifts her head, she catches the edge of her jaw with her fingertips. A warning before she tips her chin forward to meet her mouth to mouth.

“The soft epilogue.” Georgie kisses her again, and again. “The great love that creates a new beginning.”

“Oh, I see.” Melanie kisses her again, and again. “How soon can you start reading?”

“As soon as I can stand to let go of you.”

“That could take a while.” Melanie only cuddles closer, stubborn. “I might not let you up.”

“Fine. Then as soon as I can brace myself for the full sight of you in this shirt from across the room. I’m not sure I’m strong enough now that you’ve taken all my OJ.”

“Oh, I’ll _kill you.”_

“Always did dream of dying in the arms of a beautiful woman.”

The precise laugh she’d wanted, flustered and boundless. “You’re really testing me, Georgie, I swear to—”

Another kiss turns the threat back into happy sounds and a sigh. Melanie’s shoulders lose their tension under Georgie’s hands as easily as her hair is tucked behind her ear. She’s soft, under all that anger. It’s been dulled out for such a long time. Georgie thinks about the sort of trust it takes to be vulnerable in front of someone. In their house, in their bed, in their arms. There’s a deep honor in being chosen that quells the thunder pang of yearning.

Like the day before, and the day before that, Georgie renews her private vow to spend every moment earning it. It's moments like this that she's sure she has it in her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and there you have it! i am gay.
> 
> anyone thinking of reading stone butch blues because of this - it's like leo said, be careful. know what you're getting into! 
> 
> catch me on tumblr @[gerrydelano](https://gerrydelano.tumblr.com/)!


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